Israel And South Korea Ramp Up Online Censorship

Israel And South Korea Ramp Up Online Censorship

Both countries want to strengthen their control over social media

Internet censorship looks set to continue as a global challenge during 2017. Israel has begun drafting laws that would allow the country to remove content from social media platforms. The draft law will go up for final approval by the Israeli government soon, and would allow authorities to “have content liable to lead to murder and terror removed immediately”. The intent to remove this content follows the arrests of users who have spoken against Israel, such as Anas Abudaabes, who was held for four days by police after posting what were considered threatening comments referencing wild-fires in Israel on Facebook. Similarly, a clampdown on social media posts has also taken place in South Korea. Naver has been asked by authorities there to remove “real-time search words” from the service at the government's request. According to a report by an industry group in the country, the rule was put in place in 2012, but the number of removal requests is increasing, hitting an average of around nine removal requests per day by mid-2016.